Wilhelm Genazino

autograph

Wilhelm Genazino (born 22 January 1943, Mannheim^[1]) is a German journalist and author.

In the 1960s, he studied German, philosophy and sociology at Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main. He worked as a journalist until 1965. During this time, he worked, inter alia, for the satirical magazine Pardon and co-edited the magazine Lesezeichen. Since 1970 he has been working as a freelance author. In 1977 he achieved a breakthrough as a serious writer with his trilogy Abschaffel. In 1990 he became a member of the Academy for Language and Poetry in Darmstadt. After living in Heidelberg for a long time, Genazino moved to Frankfurt in 2004. That same year he was awarded the Georg Büchner Prize,^[2] the most prestigious award for German literature.

Selected works

• Laslinstrasse, 1965
• Abschaffel-Trilogie:
  • Abschaffel, 1977
  • Die Vernichtung der Sorgen, 1978
  • Falsche Jahre, 1979
• Der Fleck, die Jacke, die Zimmer, der Schmerz, 1989 (The mark, the jacket, the room, the pain)
• Die Kassiererinnen, 1998 (Road works ahead)
• Ein Regenschirm für diesen Tag, 2001 (An umbrella for one day)
• Eine Frau, eine Wohnung, ein Roman, 2003 (A woman, a flat, a novel)
• Der gedehnte Blick, 2004 (The extended gaze)
• Die Liebesblödigkeit, 2005 (The love stupidity)
• Mittelmäßiges Heimweh, 2007 (Moderate homesickness)
• Wenn wir Tiere wären, 2011 (If we were animals)

In Translation

• Ein Regenschirm für diesen Tag has been translated into English (by Philip Boehm as The Shoe Tester of Frankfurt, New York: New Directions, 2006), Chinese, French, Italian, Greek and Lithuanian.
• Eine Frau, eine Wohnung, ein Roman has been translated into French, Spanish, Polish, Chinese, and Hebrew.
• Translations of works by Wilhelm Genazino have also been published in Greek, Latvian and Russian.

Honours

• “Förderaktion für zeitgenössische Autoren”, 1982
• “Bremer Literaturpreises“, 1990
• Solothurner Literaturpreis, 1995
• “Berliner Literaturpreis der Stiftung Preußische Seehandlung“, 1996
• “Stadtschreiber von Bergen-Enkheim“, 1996/97
• “Literaturpreis der Bayerischen Akademie der schönen Künste“, 1998
• “Kranichsteiner Literaturpreis“, 2001
• Kunstpreis Berlin, 2003
• “Hans-Fallada-Preis“, 2003
• Georg Büchner Prize, 2004
• Kleist Prize, 2007^[1]
• Rinke Language Prize Guntram und Irene Rinke Stiftung, 2010
• Kassel Literary Prize, 2013

References

1. "Kleistpreis 2007 an Wilhelm Genazino" (in German). Kleistpreis. Retrieved 22 February 2011.
2. "2004 Wilhelm Genazino" (in German). Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung. Retrieved 22 February 2011.